A Worthy Dream
by yorickjones
Summary: An immortal witch named Samantha has come to Cocoa Beach, Florida to confront a supremely powerful, ancient Spirit of the Air - a malevolent djinn who has enthralled a worldwide hero, US astronaut Tony Nelson. Bewitched/I Dream of Jeannie x-over


**A Worthy Dream**

She would have attracted attention even if she were mortal. She stepped through the gate with her husband and the other passen­gers of Flight 191 from Laguardia though she seemed ... _apart_ insu­lated from the crush of bodies as if an imperceptible bubble surrounded her modestly- attired form, purpose concealed in chance. Pure supernatural subtlety.

Heads turned, male and female, to linger inexplicably over her presence as they always had, always would. There was nothing overtly bedazzling about this woman her features were certainly attractive, fetching green eyes and a quick, impish smile but, again, as she walked into the slanting patches of late after­noon Florida sun filtering into the terminal, her golden hair igniting with the hint of burnished copper, this woman captured conspicuous amounts of atten­tion in a completely innocent and inconspicuous manner. She paused, checked her watch, turned to her husband, a nondescript man with a hang dog face and per­petually befuddled expression, and asked him to retrieve their bags. And for that instant all eyes were hers, though none present could have offered an explanation of the moment's magnetic charge. The sole thought many could connect to that fleeting brush with enchantment: "What the hell is _she_ doing with _him_!"

The heels had been a mistake. Pulling her patent-leather depart­ment-store shoes off and rubbing her stockinged toes, Samantha Stevens sat in the back of the cab glad for the ride to the hotel; it would give her time to think, to plan. She didn't even mind her husband's ceaseless prattling about this or that big account, the

sound had become an excellent tool for centering herself, for emptying. Behind her warm, loving smile, she had stripped the outside world, this very plane of existence, from the boundaries of her perceptions. Behind the occasional supportive nods and slight laughs, she was as keen as tempered metal, sharp as Hecate's blade, and she swung that focused consciousness in slowly tightening circles, dwindling, seeking, pinpointing, until her target was freshly under her blade. She knew where to find this one and she knew what must be done. Let Darrin think she was here for a tan. It was safer that way.

"Out of this world or cosmically comfortable?"

Within the hour, checked into their hotel suite, Samantha glanced up from the suitcase she was unpacking, "What, dear?"

Darrin had opened his portfolio and stood across the bed with two poster-sized ad mock-ups in his hands. Both featured the same missile-breasted model in a sexy, pseudo space suit with her head and chest lifted heroically starward. Only the tag lines were slightly different as Darrin now clarified.

"You know - the _account_ - 'Spielman Bras with patented new Astro-lift for the fit that's out of this world' _or_ 'for the fit that's cosmi­cally comfortable'." His eyes darted from one to the other, biting his bottom lip in comical over-frustration. "Larry's in love with 'out of this world', but it's so drab. Give the man a choice between a cliché and a new idea and he'll pick the cliché every time. What do you think, Sam?"

But Samantha found herself unable to divert her eyes from the woman in the ads. The perfect hourglass figure - all bust and no waist. She ran her hands across her slightly swollen belly and could only answer her husband with a rather obnoxiously human question.

"Do you think she's attractive?"

Darrin just set the cards down and shook his head. Sliding up beside her, he sweetly bussed her earlobe. "Silly goose."

And it _was_ silly - a silly flash of vulnerability from a being that could, with a twitch of her nose, assume the very features and dimen­sions of the Spielman Bras girl. Or a goose, for that matter. Samantha smiled, equally for the display of her mortal traits as her husband's oblivious affection. That was the whole point of their union after all: the interchange of enlightenment and foible; though she was forced to admit marriage to Darrin Stevens had unfortunately produced far more of the latter. She loved him though, spirits protect her, and so the smile was genuine.

With a backwards flop, Darrin dropped onto the bed, kick­ing his shoes off and linking his hands behind his head. "Getting a bit peckish, darling, how 'bout you?"

The way he was grinning at her surprised her a bit. Darrin had never been a churning volcano of passion and it had been awhile since they had indulged in a spot of afternoon friskiness. Maybe it was the novelty of a vacation, Samantha thought, the possibilities of an immaculate hotel room. Then again, maybe it was the room service menu Darrin had just grabbed off the night stand.

"Hey, they've got a tuna melt! Boy, that sounds good!"

She cocked her head and suppressed a sigh, "Darrin, if you _wanted_ a tuna melt you _know_ I could-"

He stopped her with a stern finger, "No witchcraft, Sam. Remember?"

She dropped her shoulders and her head in a half-nod but had to laugh. 'Witchcraft' he called it. That's what it was to him and the truth had always been far too complicated to broach, so 'witchcraft' it remained. The range of her abilities was so vast - her power so great - yet she had given herself to a man who didn't want her "blinking" the dishes clean. Or thinking up the world's most amazing tuna melt. Frustrating, yes, but the challenge of living by _their_ rules - the grocery shopping, the house cleaning, even the sex - was part of the exchange. So she played at dutiful wife and almost always acquiesced. _Almost_ always. But there were responsibilities beyond her marriage and the intermingling of her kind and the mortals; there were occasions, such as this, when Samantha and her ilk had to rise to the defense of humanity against threats they could never begin to comprehend. Though it sat uneasily with her, Samantha added this information to the list of things she had chosen to keep from her husband. As she saw it, what Darrin didn't know couldn't scare him to death.

Her turn to walk amongst the mortals had come around again and she found herself enjoying the mission more than she had ex­pected. Not much of the mid-1960s appealed to her, not the clothes nor the attitudes nor any of the prevailing trends of history. But the pleasure she found (unheralded by her usually helpful future selves) was, surprisingly, in the _smallest_ details, the most frivolous moments in her life as Mrs. Darrin Stevens. Folding out of the multitudes of lifetimes she shared and the lifelines she bore, this was a rare instance.

Darrin was already dialling room service, and she took the opportunity to stretch out beside him. She was alarmingly fatigued which did not bode well for the task ahead; she would need to call upon her utmost resources. Darrin's stubborn, mundane insistence on getting his lunch the good old-fashioned way had actually been a blessing. Samantha had to conserve her energies.

Into the phone, Darrin put the kitchen on hold and turned to her, "What do you want, Sam? It's all on McMahon and Tate so knock yourself out."

With her eyes closed, her heartbeat steady and slowing, Samantha felt her astral self tug upwards - slip away - connecting in the eternally intersecting rings of synchronic time to a morning on the isle of Crete in the year 1763. As she awoke there, salt on her lips, the smell of vanilla candles extinguished by the dawn breezes….

"Sam? Honey, should I just order for both of us?"

Samantha's consciousness leapt to its ordained temporal home. Her kind had the ability to visit themselves anywhere, any­_time_, but were still required to root their physical presences in a linear progression towards the conclusion. They called it "The Rule Of Forward". Not that she minded returning to the present pleasures and uncertainty of 1965. Her eyes blinked open. "What, dear?"

"Room service. Aren't you hungry?"

She sat up and fixed her hair (hairstyles were always a _pain _to keep up with, and Samantha had lived through just over two thousand years of them). "That's alright, Darrin, I'm not really. You get your tuna melt and I think I'll do a little shopping."

He shrugged and finished his order while she went busily about putting those damned shoes back on again and grabbing her purse. She hadn't been lying, she actually wasn't hungry, which was unusual for a woman in her condition. Perhaps her entire body had already begun the process of focusing, preparing for confrontation.

"Okay, Sam, have fun," Darrin said with a wary smile, "Just try not to bankrupt us."

She smiled and leaned over to give him a kiss. At the door she stopped just before leaving and offered, "How about 'com­fortably cosmic'?"

And she left Darrin biting his lip, a smile spreading across his ludicrous face. He snapped his fingers.

She had expected something nicer. The house across the street from where her taxi idled was an attractive split-level job in a brilliantly new suburb that shrieked with green promise. Enthu­siastic young marrieds and pleasant-faced retirees all sharing the streets and lawns. The house she was observing was certainly handsome, but hardly the imagined abode of one of the nation's astronaut heroes.

The newspapers and magazines of the day were full of these buzz-cut demigods, superheroes with lantern jaws and smooth brows, this age's Knights of the Round Table. Every grade school youngster knew the name and face of each beloved "rocket jockey", their flight numbers, their hometowns, the favorite color of each of their wives. The astronauts that flew under the names of gods long since abandoned by the fickle prayers of Mankind – Mercury and Apollo - were already stars themselves both in the celestial and cele­bratory sense. Zeus's own mortal son, Heracles, spent a lifetime overcoming impossible travails, leaving a hundred legends in his wake, before being placed in the sky as a constella­tion by the love of his heavenly father. All these doughy daredevils (as indiscernible from each other as a clump of hastily conjured homunculi, Samantha felt) had to do was, in essence,_ hold on_ as they were catapulted heaven­ward, being spit into the face of mighty Heracles himself. Courageous, yes, Samantha supposed, but hardly worthy of such worship. Still, they were an important symbol for the human race's tremulous and long-awaited ascension and, so, served their function.

When the front door to the astronaut's home opened, Samantha was struck back in her seat by a near-physical wave of malevolent force. It exploded through the innocent portal like a jet of lava and ash blasting unannounced from the peak of a sleepy volcano. The very air surrounding the doorway, the yard, the men exiting the house, recoiled - shrinking and retreating, yanking its molecules aside from the vilely writhing lashes of void-black ecto­plasmic corruption that raped its way through the external world and a perfectly beauti­ful day. A frightful, Satanic display to which only Samantha was privy. She choked back her gorge and felt an independent churning in her womb.

"'Ey, chu ho-kay, lady?" the cabbie asked in thickly Cuban English, "Chu chure this ess the place?"

The door closed and instantly the vomitous discharge of terrible _wrongness _was staunched; the bottle once again corked. Exhaling a steadying breath, Samantha kept her eyes on the two men who were leaving the house - men in uniform - and answered, "This is _definitely_ the place. And, thank you, I'm just fine."

The cabbie nodded and left it at that for the moment. He let the meter click over into infinity and returned to scanning the in­deci­pherable columns of national sports scores in the day's paper, shaking his head and clucking his tongue from time to time.

They were Air Force men. The older gent, with the graying, slicked-back hair and sceptical eyes, was a colonel. The younger man, who chattered nonstop and ducked as he walked, bore a NASA badge on his sleeve. She wanted to reach out with her expansive senses to read their words and thoughts through the friction between their skin and the breeze, the virtually nonexis­tent vibration of emotions radiating their every subconscious motivation to the living world around them. What the humans could never know - or understand - was the shared language of cause and effect; the way in which minds could be read and secrets revealed in the stroke of a bird's wing or a break in the clouds. Samantha would use those senses if she could, but to do so would certainly announce her presence to the one she had crossed a thousand miles to destroy. That confrontation would come but not today, and not because of her laziness.

"Could you keep the meter running and give me a minute? I'll be right back."

The cabbie didn't turn to meet her inquiry but kept on reading the paper. "Chu got it lady," he answered with a verbal shrug. Samantha, her hair instantly shifting from its natural color to jet-black, stepped from the cab and approached the uniformed men from be­hind with a prepared mask of timid feminine enthu­siasm. She knew just what would work for these two. They were talking as she came up behind them and she measured her steps to eavesdrop a bit before interrupting.

"-think he's really alright, I mean," the younger man was saying, "He's just been acting so strange since, you know, the splash­down and all that."

The older man replied, "Wouldn't you? It was hours before they found him on that beach. It would've been traumatic in the healthiest of men after that many orbits in isolation."

"So he's not nuts, huh?"

The colonel just laughed and here Samantha raised a lightly waving hand and called out, "Yoo-hoo - excuse me?"

They both immediately turned and, in that first moment of effortless glamor, Samantha almost laughed at the ease of this. Being this close to them and being who she was (_looking_ the way she did) they were projecting at her so hard that she needn't give herself away by reaching out, she just sat back and received.

"Yes, miss?" came Dr. Alfred Bellows, a Freudian-trained psy­chologist attached to the Air Force for the last twenty-two years. Married to his college sweetheart, Mildred, for twenty-seven years. No children (he's sterile). The two things in the world that kept him going: fine 12-year-old scotch and the weekly interoffice blow jobs he cajoled out of his pretty young secretary, Polly; the bliss derived not necessarily from the act itself, but from the delicious humiliation that followed.

Samantha's face betrayed nothing, she had known too many of these mortals and very little surprised her anymore. Instead, she grinned even more teasingly, bouncing ever so slightly on the balls of her feet. "I was, well, kind of hoping you could tell me if this might be the house of Major Tony Nelson? You know - the astronaut?"

The other one, the younger, smirked like a fairy-tale wolf and

shoved his chest forward, hoping to dazzle her with his badges and bars.

"Well now, pretty lady, you're in luck. Not only is this Major Nelson's house, but _I_ just so happen to be Tony's best buddy. Captain Roger Healey." He whipped off his uniform hat and smoothed his hair back, dropping like an aphrodisiac, "Of NASA." Healey watched her closely for the desired effect.

Of course she had received his name before he ever opened his mouth; he was directing at her _hard_. Forever in his best friend's shadow, perhaps hiding much deeper feelings for Nelson than he'd ever admit, Healey was a pathetic one indeed. Lonely with severely wounded self-esteem. She saw a cruel father, a house too small for Healey to escape him. She saw women laughing at his attempts at sincerity, but Samantha couldn't tell if this was literal fact or if his subconscious had simply long ago begun communicating in power­ful, self-generated symbology. It embarrassed her a bit to feel that much pain broadcast through the astronaut's cocky leer.

"Oh wow!" she humored him briefly, "Have you been up yet?"

Almost imperceptively, his head ducked back into his shoulders. "Uh, no, not yet." He regained his footing, trying des­perately to mimic the way Tony sounded when he _wasn't_ trying to impress a girl. Healey's version of smooth, cast-off nonchalance was worthy of a bit on _The Alan Brady Show_. "Rumor has it, they're saving me for the moonshot."

Bellows suppressed a guffaw and turned to her with a patron­izing lift of his eyebrows.

"Are you a ... _friend_ of Major Nelson's, Miss - ?"

Samantha tilted her raven-tressed head delightfully and beamed, "Stevens. _Serena _Stevens." Her lips slanted upward in a sly smile. It was an old name, one of several dozen by which she had been known. A name and persona that she used like a concealed weapon.

She was having a shameful amount of fun with this; there was within her kind a penchant for mischief that, Samantha had to admit, made the label of "witch" an appropriate one. The delicate art of

bafflement lit her eyes and dazzled the uniformed men. From Healey came the image of Samantha and he engaged in a long, slow kiss at the top of a launch platform, while Bellows saw her in leather straps with a cruel four-inch stiletto heel embedded in his soft, naked ass. The psychiatrist inwardly shivered with delight.

She hated to tread on their fantasies by continuing, "Actually no, I've never met him. Not yet. You see, I'm president of the Major Tony Nelson Fan Club, Hartford, Connecticut chapter. I've come all this way to see him - it's just so exciting!"

Healey put a hand on her shoulder as if to calm her, "I'm sure it is. Unfortunately, Tony's under strictest doctor's orders to stay put and rest. It's a virtual quarantine. Who knows what kind of outer­space microbes he might be carrying around, right, Dr. Bellows?"

The doctor's brow creased, "Truthfully, I believe the major is perfectly safe to-"

"Well, when will he be better?" Samantha broke in, "I'll only be in town for three days."

"Oh, now, that's too bad. Tony's going to be out of com­mission for a week - at _least_," Healey lied. Then, clapping his hands together in a pretence of sudden inspiration, "Say, I know, maybe _I_ could be your tour guide, show you around Ground Control, take you to the hangars and show you the 'big booster'-"

Samantha cut him off with a pout. "Thanks a lot, Captain Healey, but I came to see Tony - I mean _Major Nelson_. It just wouldn't be the same. Maybe I'll just drop by before I go and take a few pic­tures of the house, leave a 'get well' card in his box, let him know we love him."

With one last sexily wistful glance at the house that, at that moment, contained an evil so ancient and powerful that it threat­ened the very balance of the earth's natural forces, she began sauntering back to the cab. She threw a pleasant wave to the men of NASA.

"It was nice meeting both of you gentlemen. Keep 'em flying!"

Unwilling to admit defeat, Healey called after her, "I know this great little Italian place right on the beach!"

But Samantha just laughed and opened the cab's door.

Bellows shook his head and guided the deflated captain back along the sidewalk, "Let her go, Healey. It's obvious Miss Stevens is just another smitten devotee of the 'Blastoff Bachelor.'"

That night, after the hasty purchase of the obligatory vacation souvenirs (a commemorative Cocoa Beach brandy decanter complete with rockets etched into the glass for the Tates, ludicrous matching straw sun hats for the Kravitzes), after suggesting her cabbie lay every­thing on the Dodgers in the World Series, and after sharing a pleasant dinner with Darrin at that self-same "great little Italian place right on the beach," Samantha lay still in their hotel room, waiting a quiet few minutes until her husband, gently whistling through his nose, drifted into slumber, doubtless dreaming of the coming day's pitch meeting. Some­where in his sweetly dense subconscious there were men in expensive suits lining up to pat him on the back. _"Stevens, you've done it again!"_

She rose from their crisp, rented bed and padded softly across the room's carpet to the balcony doors. As she slid them open, a relaxed, insinuating breeze swept in from the sea and moved her nightgown in a rhythmic dance and cling around the shapes of her body. Samantha stepped out onto the balcony, into the brilliant blue of a full moon, and breathed in deep. Then, in full view of ten floors of hotel windows across a courtyard and an illuminated pool, she spread her arms and lifted into the air. It was a movement free of resis­tance, there was no reluctant tug of stubborn gravity. Samantha rose as if nothing had ever held her and the sky welcomed her with warmth and lift and sigh.

Yet no one saw as she flew up above the roof of the hotel and descended again, setting foot on the tarred, pebbled surface. She needed to be here now, above, to focus and reflect, to draw on and breathe in the primary source of her power. She needed to be one with her mother, her sister, Moon.

From her vantage point, turning to face the Atlantic, she was confronted by a panorama of sea and sky and moon, with only sporadic clusters of buildings, roads, and lights burning along the beach to remind her of the indelible stamp of man. It was becoming more and more rare to find land or a view empty of some artificial brand of this world's dominant specie. This fact was both awe-in­spiring and frightening to Samantha, who'd had the privilege of watching the blossoming of Humankind from a far more distant vantage point than the roof of a Holiday Inn.

The origins of her kind, their gifts and mission, lay in a pact forged more than two centuries before the birth of Christ. As individuals, the thirteen people who would become the shepherds and protectors of Mankind had, each in their own way and in many scattered lands, uncovered something, glimpsed part of The Truth. Some had been holy men or sorceresses, but just as many were simple folk who awoke one morning to realize they had, seemingly at ran­dom, tapped into the wellspring of Lifeforce that bubbles up from the center of the universe and spills outward in gently expanding con­centric circles. There was a moment in each of their lives where they discovered they could hear and join the conversations of the elements. They came to refer to this moment as "The Understanding." No secrets existed for them now save one: why they had been chosen. It was power to boggle their formerly mortal minds and it was also a gift; they understood this, though the thirteen were never comfortable not knowing whose interests they served - god or devil - in being so chosen. This was why, upon finally drawing together in a small, forgotten city on the coast of Tunisia in the year 213 B.C., answering each other's unspoken call, they chose collectively to use their powers and in­sights to benefit the whole of Humankind.

It became the decided-upon purpose of these mystically tran­scendent demigods - six men and seven women who would spend eternity being worshipped, feared, awed, and persecuted - to go forth and mate with a predetermined mortal who most fully represented the median of human potential. This time Samantha had been chosen to join with an American named Darrin Stevens who was, for all intents and purposes, the most average, unexcep­tional male Homo sapiens currently alive on the planet. She never told _him_ this of course, though there were times when Samantha doubted her husband would see this as an insult; one got the im­pression that Darrin was quite comfortable in his averageness.

There had been dozens of these matings to date and the off­spring of these unions - a blessed marriage of the earthbound and the otherworldly - were boosts up the genetic ladder. Generations had been touched by the gifts of Samantha and her kind and even now there walked the earth Samantha's descendents by her previous husbands, rare human beings with bright minds, compassionate hearts and effortless charisma. Endora (who had not, in life, been her actual birth mother, but, by distinction of being the elder matron amongst the thirteen, had been given that title by Samantha) used to jokingly refer to their collective as "the surrogates of the gods." And so they were, and midwives as well. They took modest pride in watching their children grow.

But well before the blessing and responsibility of "The Under­standing," Samantha had known a life of magick. She was once a golden-haired maiden of the lowlands of Thessaly, one of the storied number of Nature worshipping priestesses who were known for their servitude and command of the Moon. The Thessalian priestesses could, in days past, draw down the Moon and ensnare its power. It was unspeakable magick and it wasn't until "The Understanding" that Samantha broke apart from her sisters, realizing what an amazingly presumptuous and wrong demand it was that they invoked time and again.

Luna was her own self, just a part of the equation surely, but serving a very special purpose. The Moon was The Focuser, the mirror of Life and Light, stirring the tidal blood of Creation's Mother and reflecting the love of the Father. She had a voice, Luna did, and even now (long after the priestesses of Thessaly had returned to dust and their binding contract over her broken) she spoke to Samantha. Theirs was a special relationship that not even the rest of the thirteen could share. Luna still watched over her daughter/sister and gave her strength because Samantha, alone amongst her long-gone Thessalian sisters, had learned to _ask_.

Upon the roof of the Cocoa Beach Holiday Inn, Samantha now locked her eyes on the silvery brilliant, beautifully scarred face of Earth's sole satellite and took deep breaths that she held much longer than should have been physically possible. The power, the energy in exchange between her and that cold, dead stone, crackled against her skin; warmed her from inside out. Those points of power each of us has - the roadmap of the soul that the Hindus referred to as "chakras" - lit up inside her as to be almost visible to the outside world. Samantha recharged and stored away all of the energy that Nature would allow. This was preparation, the passive gathering of ammu­nition against an un­fathomably powerful enemy.

This summer night in 1965 had the ominous taint of Destiny about it. As easy as it would have been for Samantha to dismiss the coming challenge (she had met herself from too many future lifetimes to believe the next day would be her last), she knew only too well how fragile and undecided a place the Future was, even for one who has lived there. The being she was soon to face had power enough to overwrite the future or the past (and, if the cryptic whispers of the angels Samantha had communed with were to be believed, this had already happened to the whole of Human history at least once before). She had never encountered an enemy of this kind and it had been assumed that all of its ilk were contained and accounted for. It had been Clara of the thirteen who was chosen to confront one of these beings last, nearly 1100 years ago, and the battle had left her addled and, for a stretch, quite insane. So genuine uncertainty existed in Samantha's heart, the vestiges of a once all-too-human response known as fear, but she shoved it aside. She needed to empty her­self to make room for the glow of Lady Luna.

Caressed by salted wind, Samantha lost herself in a moment of worship. These mortals, who had created their own light to shatter the bell of darkness, had forgotten Luna's power. They had ceased to look upon her in wonder, though she remained a constant beacon for their dreams, reassuring in all her phases. Once there were entire religions devoted to her and now she was most often cast in their songs and rhymes as some voyeur or devilish Puck dabbling in the love affairs of these foolish mortals. As their confidence and self-love grew, they forgot to be awed by the ways of Nature - the very forces they sought to control. Only Humankind could have the audacity. Let them, Samantha thought. Let them fire themselves out of cannons like soft, fleshy bullets into the sky; let them track their boot prints

across the contours of her face. It was what they had to do in order to feel they had captured her, finally understood her. If they now only saw her as nothing more than a dusty rock, then that is what they would find. They would have their answers but, some­day, they would realize they had asked the wrong questions. There was one thing Samantha could've told them about Lady Luna: she thrives on mystery.

The morning found her ready, prepared yet distracted. As she walked up the paved footpath to Nelson's door, Samantha was thinking of that morning's breakfast. Not the meal itself really, not the nuts and bolts - or the bacon and eggs - of it, but the pervasive note of normality and calm that sat with them while they sipped their orange juice. It was, in varying degrees, a big day for both of them, yet they knew each other well enough to know how to con­ceal their anxieties. Thus it seemed they met somewhere in the middle and their time together was always solid, steady, and easy.

As Samantha pushed the doorbell she was still trapped in that handful of moments at the beginning of the day. She was trying to remember what his last words to her had been. She saw him to the door, his clammy hands gripping his portfolio case for dear life, and she fixed his tie.

"Go get 'em, tiger," she said with a wink.

(She liked saying things like that - it made her feel she still belonged to the world, gave her the illusion that she was a part of this time. Not that she hadn't gotten a little mixed up before. Once, during lovemaking, she'd called out in ancient Mandarin, _"Fill me, Chiang!"_ - the name of her husband in fourteenth century Hengyang)

Darrin had responded with a quick, nervous kiss and said - What did he say? Before he left her standing in the doorway, images of Spielman bras dancing in his head, what were the words he'd tossed her way? For some reason, as she heard foot­steps approaching on the other side of the astronaut's door, Samantha needed to know what her husband's final words had been. Because she loved him for his sweet plainness, because of all the secrets she felt compelled to keep from him, because the words might indeed be the last she would hear from him, she strained to remember.

And then the door opened (_wave of terrible, rotten, pitch-black atmosphere wrapping and lashing at_) and Samantha was face to face with the deceptively boyish good looks of the NASA Casanova. Some­where, through the vile onslaught of soured energy, spoiled light, Samantha could see him smile with the slightest look of helpful curi­osity.

He spoke. "Uh, yes, what can I do f-"

With a nudge from her mind and a barely discernable twitch of her nose, Samantha projected an explosive bubble of force just before her and blew Major Anthony Nelson fully across his foyer and den before slamming him spread-eagled into the wall of the dining room. The impact spider-webbed cracks through the plaster and sheet rock; the faux wood panelling rattled as Nelson slid to the floor and crumpled in a heap. The effect was cartoonish but the next seconds were followed by an all too real silence.

Samantha's eyebrows knotted as she took small, uncertain steps towards what looked for all the world like an unconscious astro­naut lying on wall-to-wall plush carpeting. She kneeled next to the figure and fought against morbid doubt. True, the house was a-swirl with such intense arcane energies that it played havoc on her senses - like tin foil strips dropped into a radar field - but she had been so _sure_ from the moment the front door opened-

Nelson rose and struck out with fingers that stretched grotesquely beyond their natural length, becoming elongated daggers of solid smoke. They wavered briefly then made for Samantha's nostrils just as the "witch" inhaled sharply from surprise. But Sam was inhumanly fast. Lifting her hands to block the entity's darting appendages, Samantha's fingers remembered the proper gesture of protection. "Nelson's" strike was deflected and its arms recoiled like snakes blundering into an electrified fence.

"Uh-uh, djinn, you won't find me a very hospitable host," Samantha rejoined after filling her available orifices with one-way mystical seals, "I hear you knocking but you can't come in."

The thing that wore Nelson's form shifted and spread up­ward, curling up from the floor until its torso loomed over Samantha's head.

It appeared ready to envelope her in its solid/not-solid flesh. When it spoke, its voice shrieked through her head with a genderless tinge of mockery.

"_Oh, a magic one. I should have recognized your stink."_

It wrapped around her and continued to sting at her with de­termined stabs of its fingers, nose, elbows, and knees, which­ever body part it fancied to turn into a weapon. The shape and features of Major Nelson were no longer obvious as the entity which had mimicked them now melted and ran and reshaped to suit its ends.

Samantha scrambled back and regained her footing, casting offensive and protective spells simultaneously as only her kind could: silently with an instant inner monologue of praise and request of/to the forces of Nature that had once been given god-names. She fired these spells off as clamps, restrictions, wounding lashes of energy. But still it laughed.

"_Who do you think you are speaking to, witch? Who do you ask these favors of? The old gods of the earth and air? You seek aid from those who birthed my kind, witch! Do not expect the assistance of my parents, they are grown feeble and deaf."_

Samantha answered, "Only to their bastard offspring, djinn!"

She prepared a massive containment spell, but was halted, her thoughts blown apart, when the genii dropped its mouth open and clamped it down over her head. Revolting muscles at work, it began drawing Samantha deeper and deeper into its maw.

Samantha screamed a word, a name unpronounceable and forgotten by the tribes of Man. It was a god-name, one of the old­est, and it translated as "The Light Of Neverending Day." The effect was a burst of impossibly intense, but focused white light that shot from Samantha's mouth and shattered the physical form of the djinn. Freed, Samantha was dropped to the floor, where she gasped and spent the next seconds of safety scanning the field of the house, seeking _something_.

She didn't have long to complete her search, for the essence of the genii gathered together, coalesced, became a working whole once more. Though this shape was new to Samantha.

The djinn was a woman now, a very beautiful blonde thing in a ridiculous community theater approximation of an odalisque's harem garb. All silk sashes and dangling strands of gems, a diamond gracing her navel. She was a voluptuous fantasy image no doubt dredged from the id of Major Nelson. All bust and no waist. All the more reason for Samantha to hate it.

"_You have, as the good astronaut would have said, 'shot your wad.' Now your secret weapon has been wasted, little witch, whatever will you do now?"_

There was no chance to respond. Samantha reeled under the assault of reality-distorting devices at the genii's disposal. Steel cages wrapped around Samantha from nowhere; the walls and floor of the entire house became fire; Nelson's modular couch grew a mouth and snapped at Samantha with horrible upholstered fangs.

Their battle was a stalemate. Unless one could get the upper hand through trickery perhaps, it boiled down to an endurance test. A tug of war. Samantha was still a physical being and could be hurt or worn down, but her immortal status could too readily repair any damage. The djinn was far more godlike and, therefore, as a life-form of pure energy - as a force of Nature - it couldn't be destroyed. Only contained. Hopefully.

The model fighter jets displayed about Nelson's home suddenly sprang to life and swarmed around Samantha, stinging and burning her with the miniature bullets and missiles they fired. Raising her hands in the proper gestures, Samantha directed the energies at her command to form shields that deflected the toys' attacks back at themselves. Soon, a multitude of little explosions marked the end of the sortie.

The genii was making for Samantha, having transformed itself into a bizarre round-eyed creature with a huge exposed brain and fearsome, snapping lobster-like claws; they sunk into her abdomen in a split-second of blinding white pain. Each appearance and attack the djinn had conjured had been dredged from Nelson's subconscious – this form specifically from a science-fiction picture he'd seen years before. These surreal attacks, coming in rapid succession, were de­signed to keep Samantha off-balance, to keep her from thinking her way through. She knew this and decided on a tack of misdirection herself.

Samantha gripped "the creature's" brain in both hands and channeled a storm's worth of lightning through her fingers. The djinn shrieked and fell back, its shape wavering, while Samantha darted across the room for the ornate bottle of ancient Persian glass and precious stones sitting within Nelson's trophy case. Recovered and once more arranged in the shape of the blonde odalisque, the genii read Samantha's objective and stopped her cold.

Samantha was instantly frozen as manacles of pure iron appeared on her wrists and ankles, themselves chained to the ceiling and floor.

_"No, pretty witch,"_ said the djinn, laughing at the startled and despairing expression on Samantha's face, _"It may have imprisoned me for ages, but it's the closest thing I have to a home."_

And then it called the bottle to its hand.

"Until Tony Nelson came along, right?" Samantha said, trying to draw the genii out.

_"A typically bland human adventurer,"_ the djinn critiqued. _"But ambitious. Ambitions I can use."_

Samantha knew the doors to Nelson's bedroom were imme­diately behind her right side but the iron (a knowing choice on the genii's part) was interfering with her connection to the magicks and the shackles prevented her from performing the casting gestures. The spell would be difficult.

Samantha continued breathlessly, "Hoping for another Alexander are you?"

The elemental consciousness in ludicrous pointy slippers smiled.

"_What a proud time for our kind. What a glorious tool the Macedonian was. But, no, I'm afraid Nelson's no world-breaker - even in his dreams."_

"Is he asleep then, genii?" Samantha's voice suddenly be­coming a taunt as she sensed the transmogrification spreading through the chains. "Perhaps it's time to wake him up!"

With that, Samantha strained against the iron shackles now made of glass, shattering them and firing a thousand crystalline shards at the genii. In the same instant, Samantha spun and ran for the master bedroom.

The djinn, peppered with multitudes of tiny, bloodless holes where the glass fragments had ripped through it, heard the door opening for Samantha and suddenly knew the witch's scheme. With a sharp bob of its head, its ponytail thrashing whip-like through the air, the genii vanished.

Samantha had crossed the immaculately clean bedroom (mirrors on the ceiling - Nelson was a real swinger alright) and headed straight for the closet. Inside it were several pressed uni­forms, evening clothes, a dozen pairs of spit-polished shoes, a beat up set of canvas tennis shoes, and the genii. It was waiting for her, standing just in front of the bottom-hinged door of the closet's built-in laundry hamper. Just the thing that Samantha had been trying to get to.

"_Not a chance, sister,"_ it chided. _"There's something else within the astronaut's mind that you might enjoy firsthand."_

And there, inches away from victory, the ground fell away under Samantha. Above, beneath, and around her the walls of the 6x10 room fled from the center, expanding, stretching, running on forever. The closet had become the universe, or vice versa. Samantha tumbled head over heels, spinning free in a suddenly breathless ex­panse. In this second of disorientation there was no remembering or implementing a spell for encasing oneself in a bubble of air. The blood pounded in her head, wrists, knees. Her lungs distended, choking on the unbearably heavy nothingness. Just as her feet could find no purchase neither could her mind. She felt her blood vessels bursting in the airless void of the infinite closet.

"_Delicious isn't it, witch? The astronaut has a soul-deep fear of the vacuum of space!"_

But Samantha was trying. Certain faculties kicked in like fail­safes. She righted herself and her perceptions broke through the genii's powerful illusions. The closet was back to being a closet, but still Samantha crumpled to the floor. Her moment's weakness had left her vulnerable and she fought back the onset of unconsciousness. Air. No air.

She felt awe for the being before her. She was throwing blind

force, all the energy her weakening body could muster, at the djinn and it was having little effect. The genii just shrugged it off and watched as Samantha faded there at its feet.

_What? What had he said before he left? After that last kiss.…_

It was still gloating when Samantha suddenly caught a breath. When the sweet air rushed back in, surrounding her, forcing the blackness to retreat. Samantha felt a fantastic surge of energy coming from within her and yet separate. The djinn finally noticed as Samantha rose from the floor. It looked genuinely confused.

"_Two? But how-"_

Samantha didn't feel the need to elaborate, she merely acted as the focus for the doubled power exuding from herself and the life inside her womb. As surprising as it was to even the immortal member of the thirteen, the embryo of Samantha's first child by Darrin Stevens was reflexively adding its own raw magic to that of her mother and together they were formidable. Using this split-second window of unexpected advantage, Samantha directed an intensely focused cyclone of energy at the heart of the djinn. The blistering arcane wind ripped the very atmosphere apart as it dis­rupted the force-patterns that held the elemental together. Shriek and then calm. The air was clear and the cyclone recalled, the genii being effectively dispersed. For a moment at least.

Samantha dove for the laundry hamper door and broke through the mystical bonds placed upon it. The door opened out­ward with a heavy thud and inside was what Samantha knew she would find. The real Tony Nelson. Or what was left of him. The astro­naut was still alive, barely, being preserved by the will and need of the djinn. Nelson's body was a shrunken, gray thing; a dried-out, mummified shell with leathery skin pulled tight over some bones, sagging and wrinkled elsewhere. The horror-show mannequin with sparse, color-bled hair she found folded into itself in the hamper was hardly more than 4 feet long. It showed no signs of movement save the slow, occasional breath that crackled through its chest. And the twitching of its eyes under rice paper eyelids. He was dreaming at least; the only consolation prize offered by the djinn. The djinn which needed the dreams of its host so badly and that, even now, was re­forming behind them with an angry, supersonic howl.

Samantha grabbed for Nelson's body. It was revoltingly light. Freed of its degrading confinement, the near corpse rigidly retained its bent posture as Samantha cradled it to her chest. Upon that initial contact Samantha had been flooded with images from the recesses of the astronaut's mind. Memories, emotions, impressions. She was there during the heightened, blistering moments of the splashdown, felt the rush of panic as he realized how far off the projected target he'd plummeted. There was no one around to catch him when he fell. Luckily, after blowing the bolts on the capsule's hatch, he'd found himself in shallow water off the shore of a small Pacific island. Within minutes the tide had washed the still sea-worthy spaceship ashore. Samantha felt his intense relief as he stepped onto the sands of his native world again.

There were brief hours of thin nourishment and passing con­cern, but overall there was peace and relaxation. Nelson at heart was a decent man who found great joy in his surroundings, the details of his planet that had blended and become vague though beautiful shapes of color just beyond the window of his capsule. Here on the ground he could see and appreciate the trees, the birds, the white-capped breakers that occasionally threw starfish up on the beach. And then there was the bottle.

At first glance it looked to Nelson like a discarded Chianti decanter, one of those fat-bodied, Italian restaurant bottles most often recycled as cheap candle holders. But upon closer inspec­tion, as Nelson wiped at the dirt and seaweed to reveal the glittering patterns of exquisitely crafted gems encrusted into its perfect, unmarked glass surface, the astronaut had no choice but to be amazed, curious. He had no choice but open it.…

Serpentine, unearthly smoke. A sneeze from the poor casta­way and Major Tony Nelson was no longer quite himself. All the _"gesundheits"_ in the world couldn't have saved him.

Samantha turned to see the djinn, its shape become incon­stant in an unstable flux of every face and form it had ever worn - men, women, monsters mixing and melting in the genii's moment of un­certainty. It spoke in a much softer, almost pleading tone.

"_No, witch, don't. You, with what you consider your impos­sible stretch of years, cannot understand us in all our eons. Do you know what it is to be denied freedom for millennia at a time? It's a solid drag."_

The djinn could do nothing but appeal its fate with hungry eyes. And in that moment it was suddenly clear to Samantha how pitiable these beings truly were. Vast spirits of fire and air who were absolutely dependent upon the dreams of mortal man. In what was surely some grand, cosmic irony, the djinn were all power with no direction, no desire. Without their sustenance – the passions and wishes of Humankind – the djinn merely _existed_, unfettered and starving.

"_Come on, sister, just walk away."_

Samantha hugged Nelson's body tighter until she felt it giving way in snaps and crackling. Its skin crumbled between her fingers. Ribs went like balsa wood. The heart ceased its coughing on powdered blood. Nelson's mind simply shut off; the last images it offered were of ridiculous happy endings, of a magical marriage between human and pert, submissive elemental. The final dream of the genii's host, its food, its master.

The djinn shrieked and explosions erupted throughout the house. Fire spewed from the electrical outlets. The pipes burst and boiling water began to flood the floors. The walls began to crack and cave in. Without the astronaut's mind as anchor, the genii lost all solidity, once more returning to billowing smoke. Though the roiling vapor strained against its pull, the djinn's essence was being drawn down to its inevitable destination.

Samantha stood in the disaster zone the house was quickly becoming and crossed to the beautiful bottle resting on the floor as it sucked in the genii's intangible consciousness - its power and inten­tions blending with every subatomic trace of vestigial malevo­lence and slipping back through the small open mouth of the gaudy Persian vessel. The air cleared of the djinn's choking taint only to be filled with the natural smoke of the growing fires that were consuming the house. It seemed an appropriate occur­rence. A cleansing.

There had been no ceremony, no ritual of banishment; it all came down to this: an unstopped bottle.

Forcing the bottle's reluctant glass plug back into its proper home, the words suddenly sprung to her mind; Samantha found the missing piece of her morning. She smiled as she recalled seeing Darrin off after breakfast.

"Go get 'em, tiger", she'd said.

Her husband had grinned back at her like an idiot and play­fully chucked her chin with his knuckles.

"No prisoners, Sam," he'd said.

No prisoners, she thought as she spun and caught the bottle, heading out into a beautiful sunny day spoiled only by the plume of black smoke escaping from one less perfect suburban home.

They had made sweet, appreciative love to celebrate the closing of the Spielman Bras deal and other, _secret_, things. All in all it had been "comfortably cosmic."

Samantha had watched her husband sleep and dream. There was an expression there so like the blissfully innocent face of the comatose Major Nelson that it saddened her. The dreams of Humankind, even more than their accomplishments, were what elevated them. And Tony Nelson had dreamed of the moon. Before the poisoning of the djinn and despite his fears of the sea of space, the astronaut had dreamed of meeting Lady Luna. Samantha felt the soft white and blue of the full moon's glow and gleamed in return. Even in the face of cold science's service, it had been a good dream. A worthy dream.

Packing for their return flight, Samantha felt a shifting, restless movement inside her. She laid a hand over her stomach and mentally shushed her unborn daughter Tabitha (a real beauty whom she'd already met thirty years from now). Samantha reminded herself to check in with Dr. Bombay when she got back. Yes, this was going to be a unique child, but then, she already knew this. There would be a lot of things to discuss with Darrin, a lot of things to prepare him for. Samantha made a promise to stop concealing her knowledge and trust more in his ability to compre­hend and accept. But it could wait until they got home.

"What the heck is that thing, honey?" he asked.

She noted that he was referring to the djinn's bottle that she was carefully placing in her suitcase, safely padded between her dresses and underwear.

"Oh, _this_?" she replied. "Just a souvenir; something for the mantelpiece."

He took it up brusquely and turned it over in his hands. He frowned. "Looks expensive."

Darrin made for the plug when she grabbed it back, gently. She shot him a little warning look, wagging her finger.

He took the hint, dropping the matter with a shake of the head.

"Women and their antiques - I just don't get it."

She kissed her husband.

"That's why I love you," she said.


End file.
